Difference between revisions of "Legal Team/Minutes/2012-03-07"

<p><strong>SPDX Legal Team - meeting minutes for 7 March 2012</strong></p><ul><li>Tom Incorvia, Microfocus</li><li>Adam Cohn, Cisco</li><li>Colin Wright, McKesson</li><li>Mark Gisi, Windriver</li><li>Peter Williams, OpenLogic</li><li>Michael Herzog, NexB</li><li>Jilayne Lovejoy, OpenLogic</li><li>Karen Copenhaver, Choate Hall</li><li>Luis Villa, Greenberg Taurig</li></ul><p>Agenda:</p><ol><li>Update on various feedback</li><li>to-do's on the hopper - including priority items to get done before April 6 SPDX Forum in San Jose</li></ol><p>("assignments" and action items in all caps)</p><p>1) License List is getting more attention as seen by recent correspondance by persons outside the group looking to use the license list as a reference/standard/resource for referring to licenses. &nbsp;Take-away of this is the the License List is shaping up to be an "entry point" from SPDX generally, i.e. easier to adopt names, as many organizations have a need to have a standard way to refer to licenses. from there may lead to adoption of spec. &nbsp;Sub-text - even higher priority/pressure to resolve outstanding issues and create guidelines for matching, etc. so we can move to a more stable maintenence role. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><ul><li>Notably: Phil, Karen, and Jilayne had a call with David Wheeler from IDA regarding having the license list include a way to identify U.S. Gov't works and the legal reality that that represents. &nbsp;David is going to send some standard headers, so this will be something to add to the list and configure in the near future. &nbsp;</li><ul><li>will entail a new short identifier, possibly an explanation and reference to relevant U.S. statutes and may include multiple headers that "point" to this same designation.</li><li>JILAYNE AND KAREN TO FOLLOW-UP AND GET PROPOSAL GOING FOR THIS</li></ul></ul><p>2) To-dos:</p><ul><li>finish <strong>license text review</strong></li><ul><li>got licenses back from Adam, Phil, Paul, Peter; Michael and Rockett still working on theirs. &nbsp;There were many changes/updates, so good we did this!</li><li>goal to have this DONE by next call - about 60 more licenses to assign. volunteers for next round listed below. &nbsp;if anyone else can assist, please tell Jilayne asap!! see&nbsp;http://spdx.org/wiki/legal-team-meeting-minutes-2012-02-22 for description of process</li><ul><li>COLIN &nbsp;- lines 102 thru 113</li><li>ADAM &nbsp;- lines 114 thru 125</li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li><strong>OSI license list issues</strong> - Karl Fogel responded (email went to group)</li><ul><li>JILAYNE TO FOLLOW-UP SEE IF WE CAN GET ISSUES SORTED BY APRIL 6TH FORUM</li></ul></ul><ul><li>resolve other License List issues among group: (see further discussion below)</li><ul><li><strong>BSD Licenses overview</strong> - Tom sent email to group prior to meeting for discussion, see for reference</li><ul><li>recommendation to ADD: BSD 4-Clause specific to the U. of California in order to accomodate the scenario where a original 4-clause license is retroactively turned into a 3-clause as per July 22, 1999 notice from William Hoskins, Directore of Office of Tech Licensing, UC-Berkeley</li><ul><li>in contrast, a match to the "plain" BSD 4-clause will not carry this retroactive change and just refer to the full 4 clause license</li><li>add to license list along with the notice in the Notes field and an explanation as needed</li><li>DECISION BY GROUP: Yes to adding this license</li></ul><li>text variations such as "copyright holder" v. "copyright owner" - equivalent? can we handle via equivalent words list or need to deal with more broadly in matching guidelines? also need to consider where "or contributors" is present or not</li><ul><li>under US law,&nbsp;"copyright holder" v. "copyright owner" can be considered the same, but would want European perspective on this - PENDING someone on call who can speak to this</li><li>generally, these issues need to be dealt with via the license match guidelines for when to "ignore" some of this text - TBD</li></ul><li>Review of current naming of various BSD licenses - okay as is, no change recommended</li><li>FreeBSD and NetBSD both have an extra line at end or beginning. &nbsp;under matching guidelines this would be considered a different license (than standard BSD). &nbsp;Due to there both being prominent projects, should these two licenses be added as separate?</li><ul><li>TOM TO SEND EMAIL TO LIST TO DESCRIBE SCENARIO AND DISCUSS AT NEXT MEETING</li></ul></ul><li>also discussed concept of buckets for types of licenses, i.e. attribution v. permissive - bunch of ideas around this, as well as acknowledgement that this may go beyond scope of SPDX? &nbsp;</li><ul><li>Mark to submit proposal for review by group as not enough time to discuss now</li><li></li></ul><li><strong>MPL 2.0</strong> exhibits discussion (including discussion of GPL only or or later) - Luis Villa joined call to assist with explanation and guidance</li><ul><li>Luis gave an overview of the MPL v2.0 exhibits and rationale behind (also on previous email thread)</li><li>discussed in tangent with GPL only v. or later issue - currently have these as separate line items on License List - everyone agrees that capturing that distinction is key/wanted, but how best to do so? &nbsp;how we have it currently or one license line item with the options of different headers?</li><ul><li>suggested to have some kind of modifiers, i.e license is GPL v2 and modfied with an "or later" or "only" (or even "exception") designator</li><li>different list for headers? that inter-operates with License List?</li><li>legal team needs to decide WHAT needs to be identified then go to technical team to determine HOW to implement</li><li>suggested futher discussion on next call and set aside time during workgroup meeting on Thursday, April 5 at Linux Collab Summit to flesh this issue out a bit more.</li></ul></ul><li></li><li><strong>GPL exceptions</strong> - how do we "define" the actua license text (for the license list itself, as well as matching guidelines: should it be the license itself plus the exception text or the exception text only?)</li></ul></ul><ul><li><strong>license matching guidelines</strong> - finish/pickup where left off a couple calls ago. still need to cover the headers/notices matching issue and replaceable text (template) issues as the big remaining items - gets intertwined with License List issues</li></ul><ul><li><strong>website migration</strong> - no progress on this and legal team is now weak link - need someone to take on this task and get done asap. &nbsp;May also need to re-think navigation for legal portion as well as additional pages/information but for now, just need to get stuff copied/moved into new format.</li><ul><li>MARK TO TAKE LEAD WITH THIS (MAY ENGAGE PIERRE FOR HELP, IF NEEDED)</li></ul></ul><ul><li><strong>Process for adding new licenses to list</strong></li><ul><li>currently with business team, but does it make sense to have it go back to legal team or a sub-group thereof</li><li>current process discussed is outlined here: &nbsp;http://spdx.org/wiki/process-adding-license-list-draft</li><li>ideally need to review this and be able to describe at SPDX Forum on April 6</li></ul></ul><ul><li><strong>Prepare for SPDX Forum</strong> on April 6</li><ul><li>GARY AND JILAYNE TO PRESENT ON "Getting started with SPDX" - suggestions from group welcome :)</li><li>registration should be up soon, look for email from Kim</li><li>info here for now: &nbsp;http://spdx.org/wiki/spdx-forum-managing-open-source-software-licenses-suppliers-and-customers</li></ul></ul><p>&nbsp;</p>